


How To Stop A Haunting

by skyline



Category: Big Time Rush (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Ghosts, Kendall went to hell at one point, M/M, Minor Character Death, Supernatural Crossover, codependency and other spn-esque warnings apply, handjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 12:25:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15143057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: “That looks like it hurts, honey,” she says, tapping her forehead.“I’ve had worse,” he replies, thinking of broken ribs and gaping wounds, flesh ragged. A werewolf’s teeth, a reaper’s claws.Hellhounds, on one particularly memorable occasion.





	How To Stop A Haunting

Step one is salt.

They can never buy enough rock salt. Bags of it weigh down the back of his mom’s ancient Chevy; they feel it when they hit bumps in the road, in the stutter of the engine. They carry it in pouches, inside decrepit houses.

Oh, occasionally they’re nice, sunny places. But more often than not they have peeling wallpaper the color of yellow-stained teeth. And the Knight family, well, they don’t do much to improve the décor.

All they leave behind is destruction and salt.

Katie sucks on the stuff, buckled backwards in her car seat behind Kendall, and then later, facing forward. James slips it to her sometimes from his perch beside her. He’s not being mean. She loves the taste.

And he loves her like she’s his real sister, loves them all like they’re the family he was born to.

Kendall wishes he wouldn’t.

They’ve been on the road longer than they haven’t. Kendall was five years old, the first time his mom buckled him in and told him to wave goodbye to their house and Minnesota. To the life they’d always known. James was snot-nosed, crying in the back seat, sobbing so hard he made baby Katie start to wail in her car seat.

Kendall remembers staring straight ahead, watching the state lines recede behind them, long stretches of yellow paint and gritty black asphalt on the horizon. He was scared, but he didn’t want to show it. He didn’t want James or Katie to get more upset. They’d already been through so much.

Kendall was eight the first time he saw a monster. James wasn’t crying then. They’d been training for three years, in the woods, in the mountains, on desert plains and mesas. They both knew how to handle a gun, although for that particular outing, Kendall’s mom only gave them knives.

It wasn’t James’s first time seeing something supernatural. He’s didn’t freeze, the way Kendall did.

Even though it had been three years, and even though he knew what his mom had been doing, what she’d been training them for, Kendall hadn’t believed it. Not until he saw the face of that wendigo, right up in front of him. Everything he’d been told was true.

He was paralyzed by it.

Kendall’s mom is was the one who took down the beast, but James helped. And the next time, with the witches, Kendall helped too. They’ve been hunting ever since, and Katie too.

She’s the best of them, now. Quick with weapons, fast on her feet. She’s never known anything but this life.

Kendall still remembers what it was like before the world turned upside down. It’s foggy, faded with time, but he’s got this perfect picture in his mind:

Him, Katie, his mom, and his dad, seated at their kitchen counter. Cereal and sizzling bacon, the smell of coffee strong in his nose.

Of course, that was before the demon came.

 

* * *

 

Step two is iron. It works on a lot of things – ghosts, faeries. It can bind witches and royally piss off some lower level demons, like the one that kicked this whole sadomasochistic cross country adventure off.

Here’s a story about demons, and evil, and choices:

James, at age five, was what adults called precocious. He was always up to all kinds of mischief, and by virtue of his angelic face and general likeability, he always got away with it. He would sing and he would dance, he would play pranks, and was learning ice hockey. He threw sand at Kendall one time, when they were playing in the box outside at recess.

But the biggest thing that defined James Diamond at age five was that he watched a demon kill his mom.

Brooke Diamond was difficult, and demanding, a complete and total perfectionist. She brought her company to dazzling, inspiring heights, while driving everyone she knew crazy, including her husband and son. But despite all that, she was deeply, deeply loved.

Relevantly, she was also Jennifer Knight’s best friend in the entire world, and had been since they were kids. Jennifer spent a lifetime letting Brooke boss her around, bully her ( _give her makeovers, braid her hair, coach her through labor, both times, holding her hand all the while_ ).

When Brooke was murdered by a demon, right in front of James, who else was going to avenge her?

Not James’s dad, who had a new, younger girlfriend within a week of the funeral. Not law enforcement, who refused to believe Brooke’s death was anything but an accident. Not even Kendall’s father, who thought the poor kid was traumatized, and his whole story was silly.

No one believed James, except Jennifer, who had known him since his birth.

The kid she knew would exaggerate, sure, but she’d never once seen him outright lie. Not at five years old.

James has gotten a lot better at twisting the truth since then.

Jennifer dug into the lore, found the signs that normal people miss. She made connections with hunters, tenuous, at first. The day she decided to leave Kendall’s dad and became one demonstrated that Jennifer Knight stood by her morals, and her friends. Loyalty and death forged who she would become.

And incidentally, her children after her.

 

* * *

 

Step three is matches. Or a lighter. Preferably both.

Never underestimate the value of preparedness.

That’s something Jennifer always tried to instill in James, Kendall, and Katie, and it’s something that has stuck with them into adulthood.

Each night, when they check into their motel, they ward their room, against demons and angels, placing strategic salt lines in front of the windows and doors.

They used to talk, while they did it, the ritual so firmly ingrained in the two of them that they never worried about messing up, about being sloppy. They don’t, anymore. They’re meticulous, precise. These days, he and James work in quiet, perfect tandem.

When they were little, their whole travelling band would share one room, two beds. Mrs. Knight would bunk with Katie, while Kendall and James would alternately snuggle and kick, fighting for control of the scratchy, cheap blankets. But as they got bigger, taller, stronger, she started springing for two rooms. Katie’s curves and James’s ego needed room to grow.

What this means, mostly, is that Kendall and James have been sleeping in separate beds in the same hotel room since their early teens. They’ve got their routine down pat, from warding to laundry to checking on the supplies in their trunk in the morning. In part because, the older they get, the more willing Jennifer is to let them hit the road on their own, franchising the Family Business.

“It’s about helping people,” she always says, a mean gleam to her that indicates it’s also about ganking as many of those creepy sons-of-bitches as they can.

The boys are in their twenties now, sorely invested in doing just that.

They’ve got chips on their shoulders in exactly the shape of missed childhoods, and a yen for bravery, for kindness, that’s never been shaken from them, through everything they’ve suffered. Including…well, literal hell.

Kendall doesn’t like to think about that last part.

Neither does his mom. She began to let them go out on their own when they hit eighteen, but a year ago, something happened to Kendall. When he…came back, the solo trips were cut short. They were back to sharing space with Jennifer and Katie, their newfound independence snatched back into Mrs. Knight’s waiting hands.

Last month is the first time she dared to let the boys out on their own again.

They’re driving in a black El Camino they picked up from James’s dad on a trip back home. James wouldn’t sit in it for the longest time – picked up a motorcycle and didn’t care that it wasn’t practical.

His relationship with his father is…fraught.

James never forgave him for letting Brooke’s death go, like being slaughtered by demonic forces is a _natural thing_. And Mr. Diamond, well, he was more concerned about his hot new girlfriend-cum-future wife than raising a son. That’s how James ended up with the Knight family in the first place.

Mr. Diamond’s neglect is legendary, but hey, he gave them the keys to his old ride, and that’s something. Eventually, Kendall lured James into the car, and they left the bike with a hunter named Lucy, who works out of St. Louis.

James shed a few tears, but he’s made his peace. It’s easier to keep all their weapons in the trunk than in saddle bags on a Harley. Besides, Lucy still texts them pictures of the bike in different locales, to ease the separation anxiety.

Still, even though they’ve got the car, the solo room, and permission to drive out, far and free, they still have to call, daily. “ _Because you’re my little boys_.”

James doesn’t mind so much. Mrs. Knight is like his own mother, at this point. He loves her, and he’ll do whatever he can to keep her happy.

Kendall finds the mothering embarrassing. But he never fails to follow his mom’s rules.

He’s the same as James, in the end.

He finishes a chalked in devil’s trap in front of the door in Bumblefuck, Colorado and asks James, “You ready to call it a night?”

James dusts rock salt off his palms and nods, short and sharp. His bag’s on the bed nearest the windows, because he likes the morning light.

The front desk clerk tried to give them a single King again.

They always say _no thanks_ , they’re brothers, because it’s easier than explaining.

Sometimes Kendall wishes they would just explain.

 

* * *

 

Step four is shovels, because no one likes to dig up a grave with their bare hands.

Kendall’s pretty good at digging his own, though. He keeps fucking up lately, pissing James off. Digging that hole, deeper and deeper.

They’re fresh off a job in California, a haunting at the Roosevelt Hotel. Not Marilyn, to James’s deep and abiding disappointment.

Still, he took to the place like a fish to water, fitting in amongst the palm trees and night blooming jasmine, the intrigue and the perfect plastic people. More than once, this trip, Kendall found him seated on one of the stools at the hotel’s fancy mixology bar, nursing a jalapeño and habanero-rosemary inspired cocktail, talking to a pretty tourist or a jaded local. He always gets on better with people than Kendall.

Kendall, who didn’t get on with Hollywood at all.

The heat made him tetchy, and he hated the fug of palo santo and sandalwood that tinged the air around all the natives, a universal scent of posh-hippiedom. He couldn’t stand all the advertising, constantly, everywhere, for new shows and new albums and new sneakers. For condoms and cigarettes and fucking pressed juice. Most of all, he hated how happy James seemed, basking in all the glitz and glamour.

Like in another life, he would belong here.

Kendall’s worst fear, after the grotesque, horrific deaths of his loved ones, is losing James. He has no idea how to give voice to that, though, so he spends the drive back east snappish and sullen, yelling when all he really wants to say is, “ _Stay_.”

He won’t say it, can’t. He clenches his fingers around the steering wheel and feels impotent, cowardly. James stares at his phone the whole ride, texting and googling their next case and ignoring Kendall the best he can.

The googling is how Kendall knows he’s being ignored. James was never much for research, and if Kendall had his way, he’d crack a book as infrequently as possible. They do the best they can, but, failing that, they’ve got a geek on speed dial.

Logan never knew them, back before everything changed. Moved to Minnesota after the Knight family booked it, and never really did fit in. He helped them with a case once, a ghoul in a graveyard while they were visiting James’s dad, then started ringing whenever something strange popped up on his web radar. He’s constantly in the papers and search engines, doing his part. In his own way, Logan’s a vital member of the team.

A few days before they left Hollywood, he found an article on Vice, a rambling true crime drama about a house on the East Coast. Three separate families reporting unexplained deaths and strange incidents, bleeding walls and out-of-place noises, cold spots, the works.

There’s a couple of origin stories that Logan’s got a beat on. Gravesite is one, the most unimaginative of all the options. People always think they live on top of some pile of bodies, usually belonging to a group of marginalized people who now want _revenge_.

In Kendall’s experience, it’s rarely ever that.

The second story Logan’s dug up revolves around a murder-suicide, which is also one of those sensationalist things the media uses to stir up drama. The priest, three “ghost hunters”, and sundry “psychics” who have visited the house all favor that gruesome tale, but Logan called bullshit, and Kendall believes him.

The simplest version revolves around grief.

Old woman, died alone. Her children passed in a car accident years before, her husband of a stroke. There are actual news articles from the sixties to back it up, and it would explain why the past few deaths have been children.

“She’s lonely,” Logan explains, and Kendall grits his teeth.

“She’s toast.”

If she’s still around.

Chances are, some other hunter’s already been through. But they’ve checked with their contacts – mom, first and foremost.

Then the Garcias, family friends, and the Taylors, who own a Roadhouse frequented by hunters. No one knew anything about it.

It’s not that out of the ordinary. There are hundreds of hunters out on the road, dying young and often, but. Who knows how many ghosts?

This country’s seen a lot of tragedy. That’s the truth that Kendall and James both know.

America’s a haunted house.

 

* * *

 

Failing everything else, step five is communication.

Some ghosts are immune to the salt and burn, for whatever reason. No bones, no haunted object, nothing but emotions to put to rest. Talking is never a hunter’s preferred method for, um, anything, but sometimes it’s all you get.

Kendall and James could probably learn from that.

It’s Sunday evening when they pull up in front of an older Craftsman home, three gables and a sprawling front porch framed by Alpine chairs and a dangling wind chime. The cheery notes ring hollow the closer James and Kendall get up the walk, echoing over the yellowed, uncut yard.

“Charming place,” James comments reluctantly, hands shoved inside his jeans pockets.

Kendall snorts, shouldering the duffel full of rock salt and ammo higher. He’s got a shotgun in his free hand, shells pre-loaded, and a pistol tucked into the back of his jeans, full of lead in case they’re wrong about this malevolent spirit angle.

James gets the lock, all nimble fingers. He’s more grimace than anticipation. “Ready?”

“Locked and loaded,” Kendall affirms.

James twists the knob, and the door creaks open.

Inside, it’s the seventies’ last hurrah, faded wallpaper and mustard hues. The last family that lived here must have wanted _authenticity_ , because there are no updates.

Or they had no money for updates. This neighborhood looks to be on the pricier side.

Sunlight filters in the long windows, catching on motes of dust. They dance, golden with every step James and Kendall take.

When the door falls closed behind them, the chime-song fades, the world going hushed.

The house, the ghost, they’re all holding their breath.

James takes the EMF meter and the duffel bag into the kitchen while Kendall creeps to the second floor. His footsteps make the stairs groan with displeasure.

He clocks his corners, swings his gun before his body. The second level of the house has a spacious hallway, interspersed with thick, wooden doors. The carpet, once a plush indigo, is now a faded gray in all but a few places. There are burn marks in front of the second bedroom that look like they came from discarded cigarettes.

“We’ve got ghosts,” James calls from downstairs, the high whine of the EMF accompanying his words.

Score one for Logan.

“Yay,” Kendall shouts back, voice flat. He moves his knuckles across a symbol, slapdash and in red paint, along the door to a shared restroom. An inverted pentagram, and a few hastily scribbled flames.

Kids, most likely.

Another vandal has scrawled the word _beware_ on a wall. The hair on the back of Kendall’s neck rises.

Everything is too damn still.

“James?” He projects his voice, makes sure it’s audible down the stairs. “You got anything?”

“Nada,” James’s words float back to him, a distance in them that wasn’t there before. “I’m heading into the basement.”

Kendall’s breath comes faster. “Wait for me!”

Nerves like this never mean anything good, his pulse too fast, heart a roar in his ears. He thunders down into the kitchen, taking the steps two at a time. Dread pricks along his arms, his thighs. He hoists his shotgun when he reaches the ugly yellow linoleum floor. “James? _James_?”

Nothing but grease-spattered appliances and the rusty twinge of the backyard gate. The door to the basement looms open.

Decisively, Kendall pivots into the dark.

“Watch out,” James yells, and it’s a gut punch to Kendall’s sternum, a whoosh of air from his lungs. The manifestation of something clipping him right in the heart.

He stumbles back against the top step, landing on his ass. The shotgun spins from his grip into the kitchen, wedging under the oven.

 _Shit_.

James is at the bottom of the stairs, standing in a circle of salt.

“I told you to watch out,” he yelps, concern lacing every stern note.

Kendall finds his footing, crouched, waiting for the next assault.

It doesn’t come, the spirit occupied with trying to disrupt James’s circle. Their breath comes in puffs of freezing cold air, as James frantically tries to toe salt back in line. But his circle’s dissolving before their eyes.

James surrenders, tries swinging the barrel of his gun – coated in iron – in the direction of the specter.

It’s like cutting through air, the howling spirit keening with half its face, while the rest turns ephemeral, scattered to the wind. A grasping claw emerges from the cloud, wailing, pushes back. James loses his balance.

Kendall’s there to catch him, hands in his armpits, steady at his back.

He sees the ghost reform before James does, watches the craggy face come at them. He shoves James none-too-gently out of the ghost’s trajectory, taking a blow to the face himself. It knocks him into the stairwell bannister, splinters flying.

There’s a bright burst of light behind his eyes before he spirals into blackness.

Then.

James is shouting.

The words are wobbly and won’t fit in his head.

“-okay? Kendall, man, get up!” James’s voice comes back to him all at once, edged with the ring of tinnitus.

James tugs him up, salt crunching under their feet. He’s looking right, left, right, trying to ascertain where their spooky new friend will pop up next. There’s quicksilver anguish on his face every time he glances towards Kendall, but he’s watchful, vigilant. On the lookout for the next attack.

Kendall’s vision is blurred at the edges.

“Let’s get out of here,” he mumbles, head pounding.

Back to back, they hightail it out of that godforsaken house, a few more narrow escapes and then hands to knees on the sidewalk while they calm their heartrate.

“Guess it’s haunted,” Kendall wheezes, pounding a fist against his chest until everything works right again and all his fear’s shook loose.

James casts him a dirty glare. “You think?”

Kendall grins. He has blood in his teeth. “I’m fine.”

“You’re an idiot,” James snaps back.

“An idiot,” Kendall agrees. “Who is fine.”

Huffing, disgustedly, James says, “Just get in the car.”

Kendall does. He lets James take the wheel because he might be concussed, and watches him accelerate, putting mile markers between them and the house that almost killed him.

 

* * *

 

Step six is not dying. It’s true for any hunt, not just ghosts. 

Because let’s face it, almost dying is part of the job. This isn’t the first time Kendall’s been on the brink, and it won’t be the last.

That doesn’t stop James cursing each time he tweezes a tiny sliver of wood out of the skin of Kendall’s temple. He’s rough with the stitches he puts in, muttering about assholes and heroics, and Kendall tries to smile the whole way through. He hopes it will calm James down.

It doesn’t.

James won’t even let him come to salt and burn the bones, once Logan gets a beat on the old lady’s grave. He leaves Kendall at an all-night diner outfitted in chrome and turquoise vinyl, with a severe warning to _stay awake_ , and a headache a mile wide. Kendall is in a snit the whole time, watching resentfully while the El Camino’s taillights blaze out of the lot.

He’s there for hours, cupping a lukewarm cup of coffee and fending off the sympathetic waitress’s pitying eyes.

“That looks like it hurts, honey,” she says, tapping her forehead.

“I’ve had worse,” he replies, thinking of broken ribs and gaping wounds, flesh ragged. A werewolf’s teeth, a reaper’s claws.

Hellhounds, on one particularly memorable occasion.

He is a mess, though, glimpsed in the rearview mirror, the motel bathroom, and now, the dark diner windows. His hair is matted into sweaty spikes, darkened red-brown with blood. The stitches at his hairline are jagged.

James never did have a steady hand.

He chews his own lip and avoids looking at the dark purple bruising around the hollow of his eye. He’s more ghoulish than the ghost, now.

When James finally pulls back into the lot, he’s got grave dirt clinging to his boots and smeared across one cheek. He stalks into the diner, tall and menacing.

The waitress checks out the way his jeans hug his ass, and Kendall slumps deep into the cracked vinyl seat.

“It’s done,” James tells him, dropping into the booth bench across from him.

“You shouldn’t have gone without me,” Kendall replies, resentment and sweetened, dark coffee eating away at his insides. He thinks about popping two more aspirin, but the thought makes his stomach turn.

James crosses his arms, leaning away from the table. “You’re hurt.”

“I told you, I’m fine.” He’s frustrated, harsh. He can’t keep the razor sharpness under his ribs tapped down.

James rolls his eyes and ignores him, which, yeah, really doesn’t help.

Kendall’s hands curl into fists. “What is your problem?”

“My problem?” James scoffs. “Why would I have a problem? I mean, my best friend in the whole damn world is trying to get himself killed, but who cares?”

“I was saving you!”

“I didn’t ask for that.” James’s eyes are dark and hot, out of place among the forced cheer of vintage Americana.

“So I should have let that thing wreck your face?” Kendall demands.

James grimaces, vain and worried and irrationally petty all at once. “Yes.”

“You’re full of shit.” Kendall flicks his gaze skyward, asking for patience from a god he doesn’t even believe in.

“Sometimes,” James agrees.

Some of the tension between them eases.

The light changes in the diner, a truck swinging past with brights on. James’s face is temporarily washed out, stark whites and grays, a film negative of someone Kendall doesn’t recognize.

He makes a play for Kendall’s coffee, but Kendall snatches it away. “It’s sugary. You’ll hate it.”

James stares at the mug, at the spot where Kendall’s lips touched the rim. “Your mom called.”

Kendall blinks. “I think she likes you better than me.”

There are shadows on the diner wall, growing larger. They creep across James’s shoulders, weigh him down. He looks…older. Worn out. He doesn’t dignify Kendall’s response, merely says, “I told her what happened.”

Kendall palms across his forehead. He grazes the stitches, thinks again of the scars on his chest and stomach, a hellhound’s breath on the back of his neck. The dark depths of a demon’s eyes.

“I wish you hadn’t done that.” His mom’s protective streak has been in overdrive since…well. Kendall’s head is throbbing. He adds, “Can we got back to the hotel?”

James jerks his head in the affirmative, peeling out a few singles for Kendall’s coffee and handing them over to the waitress. This time, Kendall watches his ass as he stalks out of the diner.

He’s been doing that more and more, these days.

 

* * *

 

There is no step seven. Hunting is simple.

Living isn’t. Kendall’s never quite gotten a hang of it.

“What’s wrong with us?” He wonders, easing himself back onto the bed.

“What do you mean?” James asks from the bathroom, splashing his face with water.

“You know what I mean,” Kendall retorts. “We’re not…clicking.”

He means after Hollywood, and after this hunt, but it’s more than that, too.

The past few years – the hellhound, and hell, demon blood and actual demons – they’ve done something to those little boys they used to be. Matching scars and anti-possession tattoos brand their skin, bond them, but it’s like every hunt is driving them further apart. Kendall doesn’t know how to bridge the distance anymore.

James peeks his head out of the bathroom, peering at Kendall from under wet bangs. He sucks on his cheeks, making his face gaunt. Then, “Dude. What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me why we barely talk,” Kendall insists with unexpected passion. This has been building inside of him all day, for a few days. For weeks and months. For a whole year now. “I want to know why you’ve been treating me like glass.”

He doesn’t think that James is actually going to answer.

Except, the words rip out of his best friend’s mouth like maybe, maybe, something’s been building inside of James too. They’re loud and agonized, bitter and true. “ _I saw you die_!”

Kendall swallows.

James barrels on, “Do you not get that? I watched you get torn to pieces. I watched-” His voice breaks. Every subsequent sentence is rougher, broken glass in his vocal chords. “I watched you die, right in front of me. Fucking tell me, Kendall. How am I supposed to feel about _that_?”

Kendall opens his mouth.

The truth is, he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how James should feel about that. He doesn’t know how he feels about it, how his time in hell has shaped the person he is.

And the worst part is, it’s his fault. He made a demon-deal of his own free will. He went to a crossroads, and he kissed one of those monsters right on the mouth.

To save James.

There’s a reason he’s so freaking sensitive about heroics.

Kendall says, “I’m sorry,” because there’s not a lot he can do to make up for the months where James thought he was gone. He can’t tell James that he saw _him_ die once, too. It doesn’t make anything any better.

James never wanted to be saved. Not at Kendall’s expense.

They spent the year before the hellhound came for him hashing it out, over and over again. They spent a year figuring out this core value they each hold.

Neither Kendall nor James is willing to let each other die. To let go.

They’ll burn the world before they do.

“I don’t want your apologies,” James mutters, squeezing his eyes shut.

Kendall is up and off the bed, despite his aching head, caging James’s face between his palms.

“James,” he says again, insisting. “ _I’m sorry_.”

James looks at him, half-lidded and furious.

And under the rage, there is more:

Desperation.

Devotion.

Adoration.

James kisses Kendall then, a hard, bruising thing. It’s unexpected, half-teeth, and not at all nice. But Kendall kisses him back, just as fervently.

They’ve never done this before.

They should have done this before.

In glimpses, Kendall sees wetness at the waterline of James’s eyes, frustration and anger and something Kendall doesn’t know how to name. He pushes him back onto the closest bed and works his hand inside James’s jeans before he can process that.

He hasn’t seen James actually cry in years.

James is warm and alive under his hand, hard in a way that indicates he has been since this fight started. He throbs under Kendall’s touch.

Kendall strokes him, uneven rhythm hampered by the movement of his own hips. He’s thrusting up against James’s leg, tongue fucking his mouth, not even bothering to get out of his own jeans.

James makes this breathy, hurt sound and gasps Kendall’s name, again and again, a mantra that sounds more like an exorcism than something he’s actually enjoying. 

When Kendall pulls back to make sure James is okay, that he wants this, James strikes, fumbling open the front of Kendall’s pants too. He’s got callused hands over Kendall’s cock, tugging it up against his own.

Their flesh pressed together is more intimate, more humiliating, because Kendall wants it, and he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t want James like this – they’re practically brothers, they say so to everyone – and he shouldn’t want this violence that’s growing between them either. James’s hand on him isn’t gentle, isn’t fun. The pace is fast, stripping his skin, so close to pain. It’s not anything like what sex is supposed to be, but Kendall’s screwed up enough at this point that it feels good anyway.

He arches into it, kisses James just as messy and brutal in return. They roll together, then crash apart, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Every time they allow their eyes to meet, it’s this long, heady thing, the gaze of two people who aren’t sure they’ll see each other again. And it’s fucked, feeling this way. Like tomorrow’s only a shadow of a possibility. Like the person that you need most in the world isn’t going to be there the next time you look.

Kendall knows that, knows he and James should call it quits before they’re even more codependent. He knows it and he still moves his hand over James’s anyway, helps the two of them along until he’s moaning.

He says James’s name, and how sorry he is, again, and he tells James he’s gonna – gonna –

He comes before he can get it out, collapsing back on the bed while James shudders through his own orgasm. He bends forward, trying to miss the comforter, and hot white splashes across Kendall’s stomach, his blood-flecked shirt.

Kendall doesn’t give a fuck. He’s still trembling, still sorry, still _guilty_.

He died, and he suffered. Hell isn’t a picnic. But James is the one who had to live with his ghost.

Now Kendall’s back, and it hasn’t changed anything. James is still watching him, wide-eyed and frantic, stricken. Like Kendall will disappear at any moment. Kendall’s alive, and James is haunted.

It isn’t healthy to love someone like this.

Kendall knows they’re both going to implode. He should leave, strike out on his own. It’s the best thing for both of them.

He reaches out and twines his fingers with James’s, an apology in its own right. James stares right through him, stares and stares, until Kendall cranes his head up and kisses him.

It isn’t healthy to love someone like this, sure.

But what’s the point of love if it doesn’t annihilate you?

That’s the thing about this life, and Kendall, and James. They’ve been together since they were five years old, and they’re going to be together until the very end, haunting or hunting.

They’re going to die together, or not at all.

They’d rather watch the world burn.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many issues. Someone stop me. 
> 
> Um, so I'm back and forth about whether you need to know anything about SPN to read this. I'm inclined to say no because I built in a back story, but I also kind of ramble and didn't do a lot of edits. Stream of consciousness is becoming my terrible writing style, lately. So. Let me know if you notice any major discrepancies. And thanks for reading, if you read, I know this is a dead fandom and I must be stopped.


End file.
